


It's Not Too Late

by Artemis_Egeria



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Crossover, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, I haven't thought this all the way through, I just want them to be happy, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sorry Not Sorry, The Author Regrets Nothing, Time Travel, infinity war fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-13 20:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14755988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Egeria/pseuds/Artemis_Egeria
Summary: A chance meeting with the Doctor changes everything. Infinity War Spoilers.





	It's Not Too Late

**Author's Note:**

> It is not explicitly stated, but for the Doctor, I envision all of these scenes taking place shortly after Doomsday or Journey’s End.

They were sitting outside at a café in Cardiff. The weather was cool, but the sun was shining brightly. Their feet were resting comfortably against each other under the table. Vizh was smiling at her in his pale, blond disguise. “What would you like to do next?”

“Let’s—Aaah!” She clutched her head.

Vizh immediately leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “Wanda? What’s wrong?”

“Someone’s in my head. I’ve never felt such pain. It’s like-like worlds splitting apart.” She could sense the pulse of the other mind like a beacon. She had the sudden overwhelming need to follow it.

She stumbled up from her seat and moved toward the feeling. Vision threw a few bills on the table and followed her. He reached out to steady her. The mind guided her to an alleyway off the main square. A thin man in a tight-fitting brown pin-striped suit was standing staring at the side of a building. He turned at their approach.

“Don’t mind me. I’m just inspecting the structural integrity of this…structure.” He patted the bricks and flipped open a blank notepad that he held out to her. “I’m just a regional inspector.” He waved them on. He reminded her for a moment of Stark, not used to being challenged. 

“There’s nothing on that paper.” The man peered at her more closely. He didn’t seem very threatening, but she was grateful for Vizh’s arm wrapped around her. Her head was still spinning from the overwhelming density of the man’s thoughts and the pain of loss. 

“Really?” She nodded. He looked at the paper and back to her.

“It is indeed blank,” Vizh confirmed.

“You too?” The man ran his hands through his already messy hair. He removed something that looked like a large pen from his jacket pocket. Vizh subtly angled his body in front of hers. She wasn’t having any of that and pushed herself in front of him, scarlet flickering in her palms. She felt him frown down at her, but she ignored him.

The strange man watched them, expression shifting from confused and exasperated to longing. He extended the device first toward her and then to Vision. “You’re not human. You’re not a Cyberman. Your signature is nothing I’ve ever seen. What planet are you from?”

“He’s as human as you or me,” she spat reflexively.

He extended the device again and Vision’s disguise faded, revealing his crimson and silver face. He let out a noise of surprise. He quickly shifted his molecules to regain his human disguise before glancing back toward the busy square. No one was in sight. 

“It wasn’t meant to be an insult.” He gestured to himself. “I’m the Doctor. Timelord, not human.” 

Vision asked, “Are you here for the Mind Stone?” The distant look he wore indicated that he was searching the internet for any mention of “the Doctor” and “timelords” and finding nothing. 

“The what?”

“Nothing.” If the man didn’t know the power that Vision contained, all the better. Then, she focused on what he had just said. “Wait. You’re not from Earth. What are you really doing here?”

“I’m inspecting the Rift.” She looked at Vision and he shook his head. She didn’t want to link with his mind and expose him to the ongoing strain in her head. “I mean you no harm. I’m just a traveler. When I’m not traveling, I protect the Earth.”

“Earth already has protectors.”

“You lot?”

“Among others,” Vision said. 

“Humans! Listen, I’m only passing through. I shouldn’t even have been able to reach this universe. I’ll be gone once I stabilize these realities and close off the breach. Nothing, including me, should be able to come through afterward.”

Despite the strangeness of the situation, she felt that she could trust him. She found herself offering her help before she could stop herself, and Vision agreed. She was even more surprised when he accepted their offer. He struck her as someone who pushed others away. 

After examining her palms, he asked her to display her powers. He frowned in consideration while Vision positioned himself so that no one looking in from the street would be able to see. He apparently gave up on trying to catalogue Vision, and she wasn’t going to encourage him. The Doctor merely asked them to follow him.

They made their way around the waterfront. The Doctor ran his odd pen-like device, which he called a sonic screwdriver, over various spots without any seeming reason. He asked her to test those locations before and after he pressed his screwdriver against them. If she closed her eyes and held her hands out to those points, she could feel a faint hum before he used the screwdriver and nothing afterward.

At the end of the day, the Doctor walked up to a blue police box. Wanda and Vision walked behind him holding hands. He paused in front of the slightly open door. “Would you like to come along for a trip?”

Vizh looked down at her for confirmation, but there was really only one correct answer. “Unfortunately, we will have to decline.” 

He nodded, not seeming surprised. “Of course, of course. I’ll be off then. Good night.” They watched him enter the box. A few moments later, a weird humming filled the air and the box dematerialized right in front of them. 

They remained silent for a time. When they finally looked at each other, Vision smiled. “Well, that was odd.”

“Great use of understatement, Vizh.”

**************

Vizh looked out the window of their hotel room in Edinburgh. He turned to her, and she knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. “The Doctor’s blue box just landed. Should we go down?”

She stretched. “I don’t really want to get out of bed.” She was only half joking.

“He was not supposed to be able to be here. It might be important.” She knew it was. Her headache was not as intense as the previous time, but the urge to go meet him was still there.

When they reached the Doctor, he was shuffling from foot to foot and running his hands through his hair. “Doctor. You said we’d probably never see you again.”

He had a hunted look on his face. “I shouldn’t be here. I can’t tell you much. The moment that’s coming is a fixed point in history. I can’t do anything to change it. I’m sorry I can’t say more. Spoilers. I’m sorry; I’m so sorry.” 

“Doctor, please, what moment?” He just shook his head. For a moment, she was tempted to steal from his mind, but she could not do that, even for this. She sensed that she was blocked, anyway, too many memories in his mind of worlds untold, endings and beginnings untold. He took out his sonic screwdriver and gestured to Vision. “May I scan you?”

Vision shrugged in a way that he had just begun to adopt. “I suppose.” The Doctor moved closer and ran the screwdriver up and down Vision’s body before ending at his forehead. He avoided direct contact with the Mind Stone, but circled it several times. 

“I’ve got to go now.” He opened the door of his box with a snap of his fingers, but he looked back at them for a long moment. “Don’t let go of each other.”

When he was gone, they walked through the city center. “His advice is sound. What if I missed the next train?”

**********************

She stood in the laboratory surrounded by her resurrected friends. She still did not understand everything that had happened after she faded away into nothingness. After what felt like no time at all, she had woken where she disappeared. Vision’s body was also before her, Mind Stone still missing, forehead still torn apart. It felt like being killed all over again.

The next few weeks passed in a blur. All those who had been lost attempted to come back to themselves. They listened to explanations of what had happened in the meantime. She let it all flow over her, thinking that it did not matter much. She tried to put her powers to use when asked. She amplified happy memories and soothed fears when her friends could not sleep.

Throughout that time, Stark, Bruce, and Shuri worked together to revive Vision. T’Challa offered the use of any vibranium they might need. They reconnected synthetic neurons. Dr. Cho arrived with the most recent version of the cradle to help regenerate Vision’s skin. They replaced the Mind Stone that they had won back from Thanos prior to his final defeat. His skin was still the deadened silver that it was after Thanos had killed him. Even the newly grown skin faded to that color once it was grafted on. His face was hard and blank. 

Finally, it was time to attempt to recover Vision’s memories and consciousness. Shuri had explained to her how she had tried to save a copy of his mind to the hard drive in the laboratory immediately before she was attacked when they were trying to remove the stone. 

They connected him to the computers. She grasped his hand, which was equally as cold and hard as the rest of him. Shuri looked to Wanda for confirmation before she ran the final sequence of programming required. She merely nodded. Shuri pressed the keys. Nothing happened.  
She tried again. Nothing happened.

Shuri, Bruce, Stark, and even the boy who he mentored bent their heads together. Over the next few days, they made more adjustments. Nothing happened. They tried to explain their theories and what they were doing, but Wanda did not understand. She sank closer to despair. The others assured her that they would keep trying, but she no longer believed all their genius would be enough. 

Then, one day she heard an odd whirring sound. A familiar box materialized in the middle of the laboratory. The two Dora Milaje who were perpetually on guard immediately sprang forward and lowered their spears toward the door. “Wait, he is a friend,” she said. They backed away but did not drop their weapons.

The door swung open. The Doctor stepped out. “Why are you here?”

He did not answer immediately. He looked down at Vision and then at her. “This is the future I saw. The Snap had to happen. The fate of all known universes depended on it. He had to die. But I believe I can bring him back.”

He took out his screwdriver and pressed it against the Mind Stone. The stone glowed and a flash of light made everything in the lab blink off and then back on. Still nothing happened. Wanda felt tears well in her eyes. That was it, then. There was nothing else to hope for. She placed her hand on Vizh’s cheek one last time, preparing to let him go.

Then, a bloom of crimson started to unfurl from the Mind Stone. His synthetic skin began to warm under her fingertips. The color continued to spread out, overcoming the dull color that had taken its place. Once the crimson and navy had reached his fingertips and toes, he sat bolt upright. “Wanda? Where are we? What’s happening?”

“Vizh!” She threw her arms around him and sobbed into his chest. “Vizh!” He placed one hand on her head and one on her back.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” he murmured into her hair. She sprang away from him involuntarily and knocked over the chair she had been sitting in. He blinked at her. As she stared at him, she realized that the room had fallen utterly silent. Everyone in the room was unabashedly staring at them.

She didn’t care in that moment. “What’s the last thing that you remember?”

“We were in Edinburgh. We had just said goodbye to the Doctor after he told us that something was going to happen that he couldn’t tell us about.” Wanda approached him again and sat gingerly on the edge of the table. She placed her hand on his cheek. His irises whirled as he brought his hands up to cup her face. “Wanda, what did I do wrong? Why did you jump?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I…I—it’s a long story.” She collapsed against him and curled her hands against his chest. He rubbed soothing circles on her back despite his obvious confusion. 

A throat cleared behind them. One of the Wakandan doctors said, “Sorry to interrupt, but we should run a few baseline tests, just to be safe.”

She nodded. “I’ll explain everything. I promise.” She pulled away from him reluctantly. The doctor and a nurse moved closer to fuss over Vision. At some point, the room had mostly emptied out. The Dora Milaje stood at the doorway, eying the Doctor warily. She went up to him and hugged him. “Thank you. I can’t ever repay you.”

“Well, just stay out of trouble. And hold onto each other. That’ll do.” Suddenly, the worlds and realities that filled his head faded away and left only one thought. Rose.

“I’m sorry. I’ve lost people, too. I know nothing I say will make it better, but I’ll remember her.”

He gave her a swift nod. “Well, it’s time for me to get back to traveling. Good luck, Wanda Maximoff.” Before she could say another word, he had walked back to his box, and the strange whirring signaled his disappearance. Nothing should surprise her after everything, but she could not recall ever telling him her name.

Once the doctor finished her tests and declared Vision perfectly healthy to her knowledge, Wanda walked him back to the quarters she had been given in the palace. They settled on the bed. He drew her hands to his lips and kissed each of her fingers. He kept hold of her hands while he looked at her plaintively. “Please explain.”

Haltingly, she told him everything. The attack in Edinburgh. The trip to the compound and then Wakanda. The attempt to remove the Mind Stone. The battle. As she got closer to the point she had been dreading, the tears broke through her attempts to control them. 

“You don’t have to tell me everything now if you’d prefer to wait until the morning.” 

His loving concern only made her cry harder. She shook her head. “I’d rather just go through it once. When Thanos arrived, we had no warning. We only had a few moments.” She pulled her hands from his and looked down. “You…you thought the only way to stop him was to destroy the Mind Stone. I killed you. I didn’t want to, but I did it. I’m sorry. You kept saying, ‘It’s alright.’ Please forgive me.”

His arms engulfed her. “There’s nothing to forgive. It sounds like there was no other choice.”

She started hiccupping through her tears. “It didn’t even work. Thanos used the Time Stone to bring you back and kill you again. He tore the stone away from you. Then, half the universe disappeared. I felt nothing, and then I was back here and only your body was.” Her last word came out as a croak. She couldn’t speak any more.

“And then the Doctor restored me.” She nodded. He continued to cradle her against him, apparently not expecting her to explain further. He phased them so that the covers were above them. “I love you, Wanda.” She just held him tighter. It didn’t take long for them to drift off to sleep.

She woke to pale dawn light coming through the curtains. She was warm. She was comfortable. For one terrible moment she feared to open her eyes. Surely, this had to be a dream. When she finally risked it, her gaze fell on Vizh’s unblinking smile. “You’re still here.”

He smiled more widely and ran his fingers through her hair. “As long as you want me to be.”

“Forever, then?” She leaned down and kissed him. He returned the pressure of her mouth, and she lost herself in the sensation of their lips moving together. She felt the beginnings of forever as their kiss deepened and his fingers smoothed over her skin.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve seen the theory that Shuri downloaded a copy of Vision’s mind to the lab computers floating around the internet, but I don’t remember where I first came across it.


End file.
